


Stages

by Seer_of_Soul



Series: After She Died [2]
Category: Servamp (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, the stages of grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-07 23:20:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15918300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seer_of_Soul/pseuds/Seer_of_Soul
Summary: Lawless grieves Ophelia. Step by step he goes through the five stages of grief.





	Stages

**Author's Note:**

> My thoughts on Lawless is that he was stuck in the grieving process at the anger stage. (Although this is out of order.)

_”This can’t be happening,”_ Lawless thought as he looked up at Ophelia on the stage. _”This has to be some sort of sick prank. It can’t be real. They wouldn’t actually kill her.”_ He stared at her. She was so alive and present. She couldn’t just fade away. When she spoke, her voice echoed over the gathered people. Lawless felt every word carve itself into his psyche. _”She can’t really mean all that. There’s no way. They wouldn’t actually kill her. She’s their beloved princess.”_ But as the sword fell panic swarmed over him. This was actually happening. He cried for her. He tried to catch her, take her away, despite her wishes, but the contract, her command kept his feet planted. 

Lawless cursed his identity for the first time in a long time. _”Why greed? Why did I have to be the servamp of greed? If I was of gluttony I could have saved her. If I was of wrath or of pride I would have saved her. If I was of lust or of envy I could have loved her like she deserved. If I was of sloth... I would have stopped her.... Why? Why did I have to satisfy her greed? Why was I made to give her what she wanted?”_

Lawless of Greed cried for Ophelia. His subclasses let him grieve. He had all of eternity after all, what was a few decades of mourning?  
.  
.  
.  
Lawless never left her statue during the decades following her death. He couldn’t bring himself to leave her side. Her ashes were mixed in with the molded rock of the statue. It was some symbolic rite, one Lawless never got around to looking into.

His subclasses visited him from time to time, always at night of course. After the sun went down he would take his human form and just sit, thinking, remembering. Guildenstern came to see him most often, he still worked for the royal family. Apparently Ophelia’s cousin, Prince something or other, had grown up and taken the throne. Lawless muttered a reflexive, “Long live the king.” Guildenstern made him take a drink of water and eat some kind of bread. Lawless couldn’t really taste it. 

After Gil had left, Lawless looked up at the sky. “Please. Bring her back. I’ll give up everything. She can have my immortality. She can have my life. Please, just give her back.” 

The only answer the empty sky offered was a light drizzle of rain. Lawless curled against the statue in his hedgehog form, pretending that it still had her warmth.  
.  
.  
.  
After the horrendous meeting with his siblings, Lawless took his time returning to her country. He called it sightseeing. Guildenstern had nagged him about not getting enough exorcise. Lawless distracted himself with the wonders of nature. Places people had built their cities and castles were so different from what they had been before, and yet, they were just as beautiful as any waterfall or far off mountain range. Lawless felt his grief and guilt slowly mend, stitching his heart back together. 

When he returned, he wished he’d taken longer. The countryside looked the same, if a little less populated than he remembered. But the capital, the capital was in ruins. Every stone had been torn away and every wall knocked down. Lawless stared up at her, beheaded again. He reached out for her again, trying to catch her again. And she fell again. She crumpled to the ground again, lifeless again. 

Lawless touched the largest piece, her torso. She always hugged him close when she got scared during storms. Thunder tumbled over head. He pulled her close to him, feeling something building inside his chest. A smile formed on his lips. “It’s alright, Ophelia. I’m not sad.” And he wasn’t sad anymore. He wasn’t anything anymore. He couldn’t feel anything but a jittery emotion he couldn’t name. “It’s not just you. Everyone’s life is meaningless.” Everyone. His creator’s life would end soon, and so he’d be forgotten by all but the seven monsters he’d created. Ophelia’s life had been forgotten and dismembered. She would be forgotten along with the kingdoms she died to unite. No one would remember Lawless in time. Even his subclasses would die eventually. No one mattered. The cold, continual march of time would erase all but the immortal from existence. 

Lawless felt something wet run down his cheek. _”It must be rain. Because I’m not crying. Because I’m not sad.”_  
.  
.  
.  
The next time Lawless of Greed took an eve, he was alone. He had left his subclasses behind him as he traveled. He told them he was going to one kingdom or another, he couldn’t remember anymore, then he’d set off. He moved during the day as well, making sure Guildenstern or none of his other subclasses could stop him. 

Lawless found a lonely noble man, a duke. He had told the poor, gullible man that he was a demon who could grant him his every desire. The man, the poor stupid man, had all to easily formed a contract. But the man was so boring. He only wanted to wed the sister of his best friend. Lawless couldn’t believe his luck. After only one pep talk, the duke made his case to his friend. 

“You know me. I am a good man and you know I would take care of her. I can provide for her. Would you rather marry her off to some stranger and never see her again?” They were wed a week later. After the wedding the duke turned to Lawless and said something that infuriated him. “I know you will take my soul when I die, but I can live content now.” 

Content? He was content with only that? Lawless felt rage building inside him. How could someone be content with something so easily achieved? He had sacrificed nothing. He had suffered through nothing. Not like her. She had suffered. She had sacrificed. She had given up everything. 

By the time Guildenstern and the others arrived, Lawless’s eve was already dead. “It’s so sad,” he told Gil. “My poor eve tripped and fell out of the tower. Poor fellow.”

Lawless never could forgive his eve, even after his kingdom fell a decade later. The poor fellow would have died in the peasant uprising anyways. His wife had disappeared soon after his death, along with her brother and her late husband’s wealth. Lawless wondered if she would have made a more entertaining eve. 

Afterwords he carried on just like that. He found the most entertaining person he could, studied how to best form a contract, then made them his eve. He’d keep an eve anywhere from two months to five years. But in the end, they all became boring. He didn’t always kill them. There were just a few that had gained his respect enough for him to leave alive. They all had achieved worthwhile dreams, dreams that could never be fully fulfilled. An inventor who refused to abandon his projects. An author who’d redefined his craft with every publication. The actress who had married and become a mother. The play write who’d listened to Lawless’s stories and dramatized them. He was Lawless’s favorite. Lawless had made sure all of them were remembered. He wanted them to be remembered. 

Lawless of Greed continued his pursuit of entertainment, with only anger and the jittery feeling he couldn’t name driving him. His subclasses followed along after him, desperately trying to keep their master in their sights. He’d lost a few subclasses during the centuries. A few had decided to leave this life. A few had been murdered by vampire hunters, most of which Lawless had disposed of soon after. No one was allowed to take people away from him.  
.  
.  
.  
The angel had done something to him. Lawless wasn’t even sure when it had happened. The first time he noticed it was in the middle of a fight with Licht. He didn’t feel the anger or the jitter. That momentary realization slowed him down enough for Licht to get a good, clean hit in. Lawless spiraled through the air, crashing into the wall. He didn’t remember blacking out, but the next thing he knew, Gil was pulling him out of the wall. Gil dropped him between his feet and glared down at him. 

“You need to stop fighting with him. You’re going to burn all of your money on repairing stuff.” Lawless wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying. The jitter had returned, but the anger was diluted into irritation. Guildenstern kicked him. “Are you listening to me brat boss?”

“Gil...” Lawless said in a bit of a daze. “I’m not sad.... I’m not sad anymore.” Something wet trickled over his temples and disaprpeared into his hair. “I’m not sad.”

 

The angel had done something to him. He couldn’t stay angry, especially when he heard his music. Except one song. The song that made Lawless remember sent him back into rage again. He didn’t want to go back to before. He didn’t want the anger and jitters to overtake him again. And in that state, he lashed out every time. He had to stop it. He couldn’t go back. He feared he’d never come back. 

 

“You want nothing. You have no ambition.” The words struck deep into Lawless. He felt the rage coming back. 

_”Want nothing? All I’ve ever wanted has been taken away from me. They took my Ophelia away from me. You take my peace from me. You take my anger from me. All I’ve ever done is want! But I can have nothing!”_

“The one and only servamp of greed? What a joke. You don’t have a single desire.”

_”Shut up. You don’t understand me. You don’t know what I’ve been through.”_

Licht rushed at him, ready to kick him again. Lawless felt the rage return, stronger than anytime Licht had forced him back. Lawless forced himself to remember. He’d show Licht everything that he had lost. “Shut your mouth!” He cried as he reached for his eve. He would make him understand. “You know nothing about me!”

 

Licht has done something to Hyde. He was different. The anger had been leached out of him. The jittery feeling he couldn’t name had morphed into something familiar. The fluttery feeling burned in his stomach as the angel made his first real command. “Lawless of Greed! Reach out your hand and take your dream! Want it! Want it! Want it!” The entirety of Hyde’s being expanded, overtaking the stage and piano. He swirled around Licht, bringing them both back to the real world. “Want it, Hyde.” And he did. Hyde found a new dream. He wanted to stay with Licht. He wanted to keep his name. He wanted to keep Licht. 

_”I loved Ophelia. And now I think... Heh. Well, this overbearing, silly, violent angel is mine. He’s my eve. I won’t let anyone take him away from me.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you guys think! I love hearing people’s thoughts. ^3^


End file.
